Ride And Seek

Far From The Madding Crowd - Not To Mention Fast Food And Shops- The New Bus Station Isn`t Everyone`s Ticket, But Some Find It

Remotely Appealing

August 15, 1990|By Steve Johnson.

The term ``forced busing`` takes on new meaning when you talk to travelers at the city`s new Greyhound terminal. In this societal stewpot, it refers not to court-ordered school transportation, but rather to the circumstances that conspire to bring many here.

Case in point: Jennifer Buford, an 18-year-old lifeguard from west suburban Addison, who was driving her 1973 VW bug through Ohio to see friends. Despite the car`s age and pedigree, ``it`s in awesome shape,`` she said-except, that is, for the fact that, by Cincinnati, it had surrendered all of its oil to the route, turning a churning engine into dead weight and a carefree summer holiday into one of the most expensive long weekends in Ohio on record.

The bottom line included a $900 repair bill and a $53.50 Greyhound ticket to Chicago, which left her, on a recent weekday afternoon, sitting curbside outside the station, waiting on a ride home and in a pretty good mood, considering.

Another passenger, Gary Heinz, described himself as ``a sick truck driver just trying to get home.`` Heinz, from Wausau, Wis., had been delivering a load of pollution control equipment when illness overtook him, and he had to call for a relief driver. He dragged himself aboard a bus in Louisville and spent most of his layover at the Chicago station staring straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was in a facility one Greyhound Lines official referred to as a company ``flagship``-an interesting choice of words, considering that its cable-suspended roof, seen from the Eisenhower Expressway, gives it the aspect of a huge sailing vessel.

Asked his opinion of, for instance, the new station`s cafeteria, Heinz said, in a tone that pleaded for relief from irritating questions, ``I haven`t tried any of the services `cause my belly won`t hold anything.``

There were some in the city who felt similar, stomach-wise, when they learned that the Greyhound/Trailways terminal (they are one company now, the only nationwide long-distance bus service) would be leaving its longtime home in the heart of downtown and moving to the new location at Loop`s edge, a former parking lot immediately south of the Eisenhower and a couple of blocks west of the main post office.

The old station, retired in December at age 36 and turned to rubble shortly thereafter, was a squat fixture at Clark and Randolph Streets, a bustling area by day, at least, and a dropoff point for out-of-towners that left them within easy reach of shops and fast-food restaurants, including several in the building itself. For all its peccadilloes, its champions argued that it added a kind of character to an increasingly sterile downtown environment.

This prime location, of course, also helps explain why it had to go. The terminal turf had become too valuable for a mere bus station, especially one that had a reputation as a grifters` heaven, a haven for the sleazy and societally marginal. ``The main reason was real estate. They just couldn`t afford to stay there,`` said David Mosena, city planning commissioner.

So the land was sold and now the handsome new terminal, at 630 W. Harrison St., has arisen next to a warehouse, a type of building not unusual in the neighborhood, and No. 39 in the series of Harold`s Chicken Shack restaurants. One indication of its move is that, on the you-are-here map of downtown by the station`s main door, you are in the bottom left corner.

Checking in

Like Buford and Heinz, a good number of people who go Greyhound seem to do so out of necessity, because it`s either too costly or just not possible to get where they`re going from where they are by any other means. And it is probably true that many of them would do so whether the terminal was on the Northwest Side or in Chinatown, made of sticks and tarpaulin or brick.

While a bus station is not a civic organ as vital as a train station or airline terminal, it is nonetheless an important public building, albeit a privately built and operated one, serving about 5,500 people per day now, according to Greyhound officials. (The company claims to be operating at 85 percent of its capacity before the ongoing drivers strike that began in March and was followed by its filing in June for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.) It has been seven months since the move, time enough for work to have begun on the two office towers that will replace the old station and for opinions to have formed about the new one.

Now seems as good a time as any to throw the building and its locale upon the mercy of its public, to let them cast thumbs up or thumbs down, in the manner of TV movie critics or hitchhikers unclear on the concept. But remember that in a bus station-even a state-of-the-art bus station, with security checkpoints and a no-smoking rule-the stories people tell are sometimes as interesting as their surroundings.